The Best Web Design For Visitor Experience and Increased Conversions

Turning your website from a drab static website into an exciting lead producing machine can take time and money. Here we have a long list of lessons we have learned over the years to produce the best web design that converts readers into customers. First though, here are some quick tips;

Optimising your website for conversion is an ongoing long term initiative, a few quick points from this page will not make your website the best it can be.

Focus first on the offer, then the layout.

Dramatic changes can yield dramatic results. – we once turned a 40% bounce rate website into a 5% by scrapping the theme and starting again.

Excellent Design. In the end, your website is the most important piece of marketing you can own, and it must look good. The best web design obeys the rules of aesthetics and landing page design, this means premium real estate for the logo and the offer, concise use of page layout, customisable widget areas.

Customisable. You should be able to make many changes to a template without spending too much time sweating over the code. You should also be able to do most of that through a CMS system or something similar. The easiest CMS Systems are Joomla and WordPress.

SEO friendly. Your website should at least be optimised for SEO, that meant no flash, good used of H1 tags, CSS menus, title tags, meta descriptions and a HTML and XML sitemap.

Accessibility. The best web designs work with all modern browsers and have W3C valid code.

The offer should be easy to see and understand. A large dark headline with light background behind a features area will attract attention to the offer. The best web designs have all other elements balanced, so they don’t overwhelm. You should use short, direct, language that speaks to the user.

A clear primary call to action. Don’t just state “click here”. You should have action verbs that relate to the offer, like “Buy Now” or “Find Me”

Repeat the call to action. Drive customers to interact with you.

Use contrast. The more contrast you have, the easier the website is to read.

Keep the pages short and to the point. Whilst it is “en-vogue” to have a long page jammed with SEO Keywords, the best performing web designs have less content, more focussed offers and several calls to action.

Content on the left, call to action on the right.

You need a two column layout, with the sales proposition to be the first thing that the user sees. Their eye will naturally track to the right, where you put your call to action button. When they use Google to search for your product you want them to see the offer first.

White background.

All research in readability points to having a white background as THE best way to endure copy is readable. To put this another way you should have black text on a white background. If the background is not white, it makes it difficult to use any other colours in your body.

Stretchable side areas (outside of the body)

Either you need to build your website at 1000px across with stretchable side areas, or have no side areas at all.

Reduced Javascript and CSS fed from the bottom

Cut down on javascript and CSS, have them in one file each and load them from the bottom. This will speed up the web page load time.